Pharaoh's Wife Read online

  IV. A Parenthesis for Alexandria

  Diana Bering, Duchess of Rutland, the Pharaoh’s Wife, had neglected Alexandria in her itinerary, associating her memory of it with a honeymoon trip devoid of pleasure. That delightful city deserves better, however. In spite of the caprice of the characters, therefore, a quick sketch, the impression of the day of arrival:

  In the pink and transparent shade, Alexandria is no more than a flat white line sparkling in the young morning sun. The quays come toward the gigantic transatlantic liner, and the sanitary service joins the police thereon. White uniforms, broad belts of red leather, scarlet tarbooshes mingle with the European or American passengers who watch the colors and the luminous magnificence of the movement, curious and astonished.

  One is finally in Egypt, after the tedium of the severe and arrogant customs. After the docks, filled with yellow Arabs, the streets are swarming with robes, goats, donkeys and horses with turquoise collars. With a little squalor and a great deal of noise, all races and al colors of skin, all languages and all religions rub shoulders; there are Greeks in fustanellas; there are old Arabs with malicious wrinkled eyes, smoking their nargilehs at the doors of the indigenous cafés, daydreaming; there are young ones, in loose robes of white-striped cloth, or silk for the better-off, playing football, or fighting, howling like young wild animals.

  “Arabia” files past, according to the indications the client gives, if he is capable of giving any, to the arbagui: “Yalminack! Semalack! Doogri!”—Left! Right! Straight ahead!

  Here is the immense Ahdan bazaar, populated by Jewish and Muslim merchants. One can buy pistachio-nuts, cooked grains, biblidia, dates, and the local dried fruits. And, turning into an old street without sidewalks, full of debris, here is the sea again, the pretty “bahra,” as blue as a sapphire, with a ruined fort profiled on the horizon.

  Now there is the European quarter, elegant, chic, modern, too neat. A magnificent coast road that goes all the way to the king’s palace, majestic and variegated, on the road to Abukir, serves as a promenade in the evenings. Under the burning midday sun, however, when everyone is taking a siesta, Arab children crouch down on the cool stones in the shade and, happy and tranquil, open their loose robes and search for their lice, like little apes.

  On the Saïd Boulevard, the buildings, with large columns of pink marble, are radiant with light. In one of them is a café. It is not a banal place in which one hastens to conclude one’s consumption because other clients are waiting for seats; it is a salon where people meet and watch pretty women go by in a harmonious décor. Large rooms, with rich woodwork, mosaics of gold and precious stones are furnished with comfortable bright armchairs. Palm trees and flowers are everywhere. Elegant, refined people savor a Turkish mocha served with a glass of iced water.

  Outside, life swarms intensely. By way of the large and spacious Misjala street one reaches Fouad street. It is the wealthy quarter of the city, with sumptuous shops, mostly belonging to Syrians: the luxurious commercial center. The carriage trade is organized as in Paris, well-varnished and well-cared-for vehicles carrying rich foreigners or modern Muslims, perhaps to amorous rendezvous.

  At Groppi’s patisserie, the upper crust of Alexandria gather at tea-time; people talk about the races, bridge, clothes and Paris—Paris! Ah, Paris!—feverishly, desirously, lovingly. To one side, in Fouad Street, so elegant, are two mosques and cinemas.

  Beneath the ardent sun, flowers pullulate in the white and yellow city, inebriating it with the perfume of delicate roses; the city gives an impression of health, of happiness, of wealth, which one does not find elsewhere, even in Cairo. Everything is pretty or beautiful, everything is full of joy.

  When dusk invades the immense bay that forms the harbor, the view is charming; along the coast road the casinos fill with laughter and cheerful music, with jazz. Above the marvelous villas, with their Edenic gardens, floats the sky, so blue and so pure: the African sky, calm and infinitely beautiful.

  V. Cairo Again

  Diana wanted to spend a second day in Cairo. Everything amused her, even the beggars—how numerous they are in Cairo!—demanding baksheesh, the merchants with their obsessive “Sett! Sett! am el marouf!” (Madame, I beg you), the little donkeys trotting lightly along and the little shoe-shiners.

  So many tourists, foreigners, automobiles and electric trams in the broad avenues! So many large stores and dance-halls! A rich fellah goes by, paunchy beneath his robe of embroidered silk, his eternal amber chaplet between his ring-laden fingers. He resuscitates, among these modernities, the magic of the Orient.

  Old Coptic churches and incongruous bazaars that reek of incense neighbor patissiers baking their pastries in the open; indigenous children feast on khishnah—sugared vermicelli—or loukomades, a kind of frothy Armenian fritter. Little pistachio-merchants harass you: “Smchi!” (Go away!) you cry, but the wretched child persists, begging, and you give him a piastre, which he takes while capering like a goat and which he gives to the patissier: “Cailakierach, sett!” (Many thanks, Madame.)

  And on the large indigenous houses, the mashrabiyas of dark wood, behind which young Muslim women are looking out on the street, watching the Europeans—mysterious cages in which little feminine souls are perhaps getting bored. But no! They know nothing of liberty, dreams, the desire for space; they know nothing, those young Muslim women of old Cairo, of theaters, cinema or dancing; they have never heard the enervating, tender and puerile love-songs of handsome young men; they are unaware; they are happy behind their brown shutters, amused and astonished that these Europeans should come from so far away, even from Paris, to see houses like theirs, and old and arrogant Bedouins.

  The entire city extends before you with its centuries-old minarets; the almost immense city with its white houses, its sunlit terraces, its marvelous gardens, its mosques, its bazaars, its souks, its cosmopolitan palaces, a mixture of charming exoticism and brash modernism: Cairo, the ancient city where all races mingle, where the ardent desert wind passes through, which sometimes causes the burning gilded sands to dance before the eyes.

  Then, there is the descent toward the present Cairo, animated and joyful, with tourists dressed in bright hues, and always the dirty and ragged little beggars swarming around the Ezbekieh, a splendid garden of rare species and harmonious colors. Around it are the great avenues bordered by palm-trees, where the most beautiful residences are, and the palace of the ex-Khedive.

  After the Qasr al-Nil bridge, another center, this one commercial. All the shops are crowded here, bright and cheerful in the benevolent and cool shade. At the fashionable patisserie and elegant and perfumed crowd gathers on Sunday mornings and the garden of Groppi’s then resembles a vast flower-basket.

  At the Zoo, one of the most beautiful in the worlds, shady and perfumed with delicate flowers, pink ibises stroll at liberty on the pale green lawns, beside a pool where nenuphar lilies grow, and all sorts of animals, even very rare ones, are amusing to behold.

  Night-clubs and dancing-halls pullulate, bearing Parisian names like Le Perroquet. In the midst of the heat, softened by the warm breeze scented by inebriating flowers, all those Levantines, Europeans and rich indigenes ruminate their desire for that Paris. Blasé individuals avid for illusion sit down at table before an iced whisky and watch music-hall artistes singing to the strains of a negro orchestra. They search for memories of Paris, or are nostalgic for a Paris they have not yet seen.

  And the Syrian women with bronzed velvet eyes and long curly lashes, the European women in silk dresses and ermine hoods, the men in smoking-jackets, are all thinking, as they go back along the spacious streets that overlook the gafu—the night-garden—about the same thing: Paris; without savoring the poetry of the city of mosques, without perceiving the beauty of the Oriental night, of Leilah, full of sweetness and perfumes.

  On the stage, a blonde with a pale face starred with two blue eyes, of which there are none in Cairo, a graceful, mischievous gamine clad in silk chiffon, with no other
jewelry than her youth—a blonde from Paris—sings: “Paris, king of the world...”

  The Duchess, Adsum and Ormus are among the audience, and Diana is astonished to see he two mages amusing themselves frankly, abandoning their habitual gravity to applaud the young woman.

  “My Father,” she says, timidly, to Adsum, who is busy making his glass of champagne froth by stirring it with a cocktail-stick, “how is it that you’re enjoying yourself in this environment?”

  “Do you take me for a supernatural being, my Daughter? I was born of a woman, like all men, and my father, in Norway, was merely a humble timber merchant. Christ himself was born of a carpenter. The spirit, like the body, needs rest. One cannot always soar, without folding one’s wings from time to time.”

  Ormus, as a sign of approval, intones softly: “Paris, king of the world…”

  VI. The Pyramids

  Renouncing a further prolongation of their stay in Cairo, the Duchess and her companions decided to make a classic visit to the pyramids of Giza. The Reïs Ahmed went down to the river to give instructions to the dragoman for the dahabieh, and they set off in the motor-caravans. Having crossed the Nile over the great Qasr al-Nil bridge, they reached the road leading to the stupid cones, from which forty centuries contemplate you.

  “We’ll arrive too soon,” said the Reïs. “What do you think about going upriver toward El Bahariya and going through the sands to arrive at the Pyramids from the west. That way, tomorrow morning, we’ll see the sun rise behind Cairo and the Sphinx. The view is worth the trouble.”

  “Very well,” Diana replied. “That way, we’ll avoid the Mena House and the Cook Agency.”

  Following the Reïs’ directions, the Duchess, who was at the wheel, steered the vehicle alongside the chain of hills as far as Kerdasa, in the bed of a dried-up canal half-filled with extremely fine sand, into which the wheels sank to the thickness of the tires. Finally, the automobiles were able to emerge from that dust, and at ten o’clock the moon rose, splendidly.

  They were then in mid-desert; from the summit of the hill-crest, the eyes embraced simultaneously, on the left, the valley of the Nile and Cairo, whose minarets sparkled in luminous lines on one side and dark ones on the other. The Nile, still dark facing the city, was shining to the north like a broad silver ribbon. The air was pure and transparent; all the details of Masr El Kaïrah stood out clearly, one after another, as the royal star climbed higher in the sky.

  With gestures, Ahmed indicated the city’s various monuments: “Slightly to the left, the Kam’a El Azhar, from which we’ve come; further away, on the horizon, those bright dots are the minarets of the tombs of the caliphs; further to the right, the citadel. Following the line of the ancient ramparts, there’s the Darb El Sakiah, which leads to the El Meïdan souks. That square of sparkling minarets is the Kam’a ibu Touloun.”

  The spectacle was magical. The Oriental quarters, illuminated by the pale radiance, presented a sect straight out of the Thousand-and-One Nights. One expected to see an adorable peri gliding through the diamond-bright atmosphere, or a winged horse varying away the prince of dreams and the princess of poetry. All the details of Arab architecture, so various and so noble in its apparent disorder, appeared one after another, creating graduations of hue ranging from the most delicate pink to the deepest violet. Toward the center, the verdure of the garden of the Ezbekieh and those of Kamil Pasha formed two patches of limpid emerald green, striped with black by the tall cypresses. The Nile, in all its splendor, was like an immense stream of mercury. Then the shadows shortened, as the rays fell more vertically.

  “Turn around now,” said Ahmed, “and look at the desert.”

  In that direction, a succession of gentle undulations becomes gradually more accentuated toward the south-west as the chain of the Libyan hills rose up. The aridity of the sand in the moonlight gives the impression of a snowy steppe, roseate white accentuated in places by a brutally violet amber. Close by, on the edge of the rocky chain, a brightly-illuminated cube projects the blue-tinted rays of its electricity far and wide. That is the Mena Hotel, and a procession of crawling ants is visible making its way toward that huge dice set on the sands. The air is so pure that burst of laughter and voices reach them.

  The nasal sound of an accordion soon joins the voices.

  Diana made an angry gesture. “More Cook tourists. Let’s go!”

  “They’ll be here for a good three or four hours,” said the Reïs. “What we ought to do is go toward Kerdasa and visit the pyramids of Abu Rawash, and come back to Giza via the desert. With your powerful autos, it’s a small detour of no importance; we’ll arrive at the pyramid of Cheops after these untimely folk have gone.”

  Diana surrendered the wheel to the chauffeur and got back into the vehicle. The excursion continued. “I’ve already see the pyramids of Giza,” she said to the Reïs, “but not those of Abu Rawash. Are they interesting?”

  “The largest one, in raw brick, which is imposing in its mass, has the rock itself for a nucleus. The nature of the materials and the calcareous sarcophagus seem to indicate an extreme antiquity. The other two pyramids, which are smaller, are unimpressive. Fortunately, that region doesn’t have the celebrity of Giza, where we’d be harassed by the indigenes. Watch out for debris, driver—there are heaps of it everywhere.”

  The road was, indeed, becoming hazardous. The travelers got out of the vehicle, climbed a hill from which they would be able to see the grandiose monument, and examined the landscape.

  Apart from the large pyramid, which loomed up enormously in the midst of a mass of rubble, there was complete desolation, like a dead world. The vague forms of walls, columns and porticos, all so worn and corroded, eaten away by the centuries, an architectural skeleton in the moonlight, chilled the heart.

  “The Earth after the disappearance of humans,” said Ormus.

  A dog howled like a lunatic in the village; other dogs immediately replied.

  “Go back,” said the Duchess to the driver. “Wait with the autos. We’re going to take a stroll through this nightmare.”

  “What!” said a hoarse but ironic voice, in bad English. “Carriages move without horses now? That oddity’s all that was lacking!”

  Everyone turned round. A phantom had just surged forth from an excavation, doubtless the familiar spirit of the dead world: an old man, almost naked, as bald as a kneecap, with a beard that would have made Moses or Michelangelo jealous, thin and bony limbs without the slightest appearance of flesh, and a skin shiny with dirt without any crust of dust.

  They all considered the strange ascetic in bewilderment.

  “Ha ha!” he sniggered. “Look at what civilization represents nowadays! What are you doing here? It’s the domain of the dead—mine. Let the living stay away! Or, if they want a place, let them say so—there’s no shortage of tombs in my domain.”

  “Who are you?” Adsum asked.

  “Who am I? Less than nothing, but more than you. I’m human poverty. I’ve always existed, and I think I’m immortal.”

  “An Egyptian misanthrope!” said Diana. “That’s not banal.”

  “You’re mistaken, young woman. I’m no misanthrope. I love men, my brothers in stupidity, and women, my sisters in vice and turpitude—and the proof is that I haven’t run away from you. Why should I avoid you, you who are bringing progress and liberty here—but perhaps not virtue and liberty? Ha ha! Liberty hamstrung by noble Albion! Virtue guided by a clergyman, with the Bible in one hand and a whip in the other.”

  “We’re not English,” said the Duchess. “We’re American.”

  “Aha! The daughter of Noah who covers her father’s nakedness.”

  “Punish this clown!” exclaimed the American woman.

  “If that might amuse you. I have a hard skin, no longer having anything but skin. Have I come in search of you? You came to wake me up. I have a right and a duty to spit my scorn at you, males and females of a ridiculous and wicked world, a world in which people grow stupid in er
rors and lies. I’ve almost been human, but I’ve rejected that shame with horror. You ask who I am? I’m the scum, the mud, the pus of a rotten world! Hit me! Trample me underfoot. I’ll infect you with my dirtiness, my ignominy, my virus. And now you know that such an abject being exists, go away! Get out! Let the dead rest in peace!”

  He turned his back on them and went back into his hole.

  The tourists, pensive and nonplussed, went back to their automobiles and took the road to Giza. They remained silent until the vehicles stopped in front of the pyramid of Cheops. The excursionists from the Mena Hotel had gone, and the Bedouins who, under the pretext of explaining the region of the tombs and acting as cicerones thereto, are as bothersome as mosquitoes, had gone back to their hovels, not expecting other visitors. The place was therefore free, and the visitors could dream in complete liberty.

  The moon, now at the highest point of its course, illuminated the desert and the gigantic monuments as well as broad daylight, with the advantage that it was much cooler at this hour. Antal Fodor went to the vehicle to look for a scarf and wrapped the Duchess in it. A sepulchral silence reigned over the vast extent.

  “Behold these proud sepulchers,” said Ormus, “which have seen so many great events pass over thousands of years, and now have only the inexhaustible caravan for tourists for admirers.”

  “I anticipated another emotion,” said Diana. “I expected to have the sensation of a recall of memory. For the second time, the Sphinx remains mute for me!”

  “It’s because your Double isn’t here. The colossal tomb of Cheops was not visible for you, who resided in Thebes and only went out of it in order to be taken to the Valley of the Kings.”

  Diana, however, a trifle disillusioned, compared all that one imagines with the little that one encounters. Looking at the enchantment of Egypt at too close a range, that evening, she saw idols falling within her, breaking her dream, from which the obelisk had passed.